Haitian Creole is a French-based creole language native to the people of Haiti. It’s also a widely spoken unofficial language in other parts of the world, such as France, Canada, and the US. Because it’s a French Creole, its vocabulary is estimated to be over 90% made up of French origin words. However, the grammar is highly simplified and mostly regular when compared to French, so many new learners find it easy to reach a conversational level early on in their learning journey.
If you’re curious about Haitian Creole and want to learn more, we cover the basics in our articles about grammar and vocabulary. Today, we’re talking about plurals, and we’ve also covered negation, adjectives, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, vocabulary, and more. Make sure to check our other articles for further information on Haitian Creole basics.
What is a plural, and what does it do?
A “plural” is a grammatical concept used to denote ‘more than one’. In English grammar, a plural is generally marked by adding “-s” at the end of a word. Consider the following examples: cat – cats, book – books, house – houses.
Depending on a language’s grammar, plurals can be applied to multiple parts of speech, such as nouns (cat, book, house), verbs (go, eat, sleep), pronouns (I, he, she), or adjectives (beautiful, yellow, sweet). The more complex the grammar, the more likely you are to encounter plural forms for multiple grammatical categories (think about Spanish, German, or Russian, for example).
English marks the plural of nouns and pronouns, but not verbs and adjectives. The plural of a pronoun in English grammar is marked through using a different root word. Compare the first and third-person singular-plural pairs of pronouns: I – we, he/she – they, my – our, his/her – their, me – us, him/her – them.
How the plural of nouns is formed in Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole grammar is highly simplified when compared to French. You could say that Haitian is, in fact, more similar to English in this regard. Because Haitian Creole has no agreement between nouns or pronouns and verbs, or between nouns and adjectives, there will also be no marked plural for verbs and adjectives. Words such as ‘to read’, ‘to dance’, ‘to play’, or ‘noisy’, ‘cold’, ‘funny’ do not change their form, irrespective of other surrounding words in a sentence.
The only parts of speech marked for plural in Haitian Creole are nouns (e.g.: car, ball, hat) and pronouns (e.g.: I, you, he). Unlike English which uses “-s” for both definite and indefinite nouns, the indefinite nouns (nouns not preceded by “the”) in Haitian Creole are not marked for plural at all. Take a look at these examples:
Ban mwen yon liv — Give me a book.
Ban mwen senk liv — Give me five books.
In the case of definite nouns (preceded by “the”), Haitian Creole uses an additional “yo” after the noun to mark plurals:
Mwen te manje yon pòm. – Mwen te manje pòm yo. (I ate an apple. – I ate the apples.)
Practice your plurals with a Haitian Creole tutor
The difference between an indefinite plural and a singular is context-dependent. If you want to master Haitian Creole plurals for better reading comprehension, and if you’d also like to learn singular and plural pronoun pairs, an online tutor can help you learn faster and more efficiently.
You don’t have to be the best at grammar to speak proper Haitian. We help our learners put things into context, and we’re all about interactive, communicative lessons. No boring grammar drills or cramming! With our fantastic Haitian tutors, you’ll master the basics in no time, and you’ll enjoy the benefit of highly engaging, personalized lesson plans and activities.